


Better Than None

by Kaydel



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-13 03:36:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13561941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaydel/pseuds/Kaydel
Summary: What exactly, is he taking all these risks for? Hux cannot fathom. Each time they meet seems more vivid, more intense than the last. He thinks about those nights for months on end in the quiet moments before he sleeps and wakes up aching for more.Hux, Poe, and the spaces in between.





	Better Than None

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy the fic, blueteak! Thanks for giving me the chance to get into Hux's head for a bit ;)

They meet in a seedy bar on the lower levels of Coruscant. It has taken almost a month of Hux asking, intimidating, or flat out bribing informants to tell him of Poe Dameron’s movements to find out where their next rendezvous point was to be. Weaker men would have long given it up as a lost cause. But then, neither of them have ever been sticklers for convention. 

The location Poe has chosen this time seems designed to provoke a reaction from Hux; a small dive in the undercity of Coruscant, where informers for the old Empire used to meet their handlers. These days, it mainly hosts exotic Twi’lek dancers and serves beverages of lower to middling quality. There are a few old-timers, mostly alien bounty hunters and droids, who still remember stories from the glory days of the Empire, but they seem to want to sell these stories mostly for a few measures of good Corellian wine to tourists looking for souvenirs to take home. 

The bar, Hux notes wryly, is called The Faithful Friend. He supposes Dameron’s sense of irony is still as strong as ever. It was surprisingly easy to sneak away from the First Order to make this meeting, all things considered. Kylo Ren is even now still fuming over his failure to kill Luke Skywalker, and generally making life difficult for anyone in his general vicinity. A short reconnaissance mission to Coruscant, ostensibly to discover any forgotten datafiles in the old Imperial security archives, was barely worth Ren’s attention. Especially when Hux had promised to look out for any old Sith holocrons; Ren was as easy to bribe as he was to read. One didn’t need anything as esoteric as The Force to do that. 

“I almost thought you wouldn’t make it this time,” Dameron says, when Hux finally finds him in some dark corner of the bar. He’s watching a holodrama on a cracked viewscreen and sipping a large tumbler of ale. “Figured you might have been distracted with more important First Order business. Another hour and I would’ve been outta here.”

Hux forces himself to scowl. “Yes, well. The new Supreme Leader is still deciding what business is the most important to him.” 

“Lucky me. I guess I should be grateful you don’t have an entire battalion of storm troopers backing you up here, huh.” Poe grins, and it’s that same rakish smile that Hux recognises from the image files tagged to all the First Order security alerts. 

_Be on the alert for this Rebel. He is entirely too suave and dangerous to your mental wellbeing. Do not engage. Report all sightings to General Armitage Hux at once._

Hux doesn’t like to think about what conclusions the rest of the First Order would draw if he actually sent out fliers like that. Possibly Ren would never let him live it down.

“Well, I’ve got a room booked out back,” Poe says, his voice already slipping from sharp, harsh consonants to something more easy and mellow and deceptively unguarded. Hux has been the recipient of this tactic too many times to believe it to be anything more than a devious ploy to make him spill his secrets. Poe has always been better at seduction, however hopeless he might be at other sorts of things, like subtlety and political machinations. 

“I can hear you thinking from here.” Dameron stands up, hefting a small kit bag over his shoulder. He tosses some credit chips on the table. “Let’s go, _Armitage_. Wouldn’t want you to be late for your next galactic conquest planning session.”

He says Hux’s name with an exaggerated Coruscant accent, just to irritate Hux that little bit more. They’ve always had to have the upper hand over each other. Always easier to focus on the small, minor details, after all, and try to forget the enormity of the betrayal they commit each time they meet like this. 

Hux does not remember who made the first move or how they got themselves into this suicidal situation in the first place. Perhaps it was the moment they shared on the _Finalizer_ , when Ren had stormed out of the interrogation room, and Hux had turned to stare at Dameron’s prone form, still sagging on the torture bench. He remembers reaching out with his thumb to wipe a bead of blood from the corner of Poe’s mouth, then the sharpness of Poe’s teeth as they bit down on his gloved hand, the flash of anger in him replaced almost immediately with a hot, shameful surge of lust.

He’d paid it no heed, convinced himself that it was the thrill of finally being able to have such a prominent Resistance pilot imprisoned in _his_ ship. They’d barely spoken two sentences to each other — Ren had of course taken over the interrogation after previous methods by intelligence agents had proved ineffective — before FN-2187 had broken free of his programming and decided he wanted to take Poe along with him on his flight to freedom. 

Yet, somehow, they had ended up in the same small cantina in an obscure Outer Rim planet, where alien musicians played bad music for drunken freighter pilots. They had both been chasing the same source of vital intelligence regarding old Imperial plans for Star Destroyers stored somewhere on the shipyards at Kuat. Instead of pulling a blaster on him, Poe had invited Hux to help him finish his pitcher of ale. Apparently the source had disappeared into the strange half-world of the Hutt cartels two months before either of them had landed. There had been no point chasing after him, not without months of careful planning. Having foolishly decided to try and attempt intelligence gathering on his own, and with a dust storm obscuring communication back to his ship, Hux had agreed.

One drink led to two, which somehow led to five more. They had woken up the next day in a small dingy room in a tenement five blocks away from the catina, naked and entangled with little memory of the night before and a guilt complex that was only tempered by their impossible attraction to one another. Poe had left after a third sweaty, sticky round, after Hux had nearly screamed himself hoarse into the cheap mattress. They had not spoken, and Hux had been glad for small mercies.

Hux had been willing to pass it off as a moment of madness, brought on by the frustration of a failed extraction, and the influence of the alcohol. After six months, however, Poe had managed to transmit a message to his personal datapad. It had only been a set of coordinates, a date and a time, but it had been enough for Hux. He’d gone alone, dressed very carefully this time in civilian clothes and nursing a nagging heaviness in the pit of his belly when Phasma didn’t even give his cover story the scrutiny of a close questioning.

He’d half expected to be mugged, either by the Rebellion or outraged members of the First Order. But he’d reached the rendezvous point safely and Poe had been alone, again. This time in an expensive bar on an insignificant core planet with little to recommend it apart from its huge mineral deposits. They hadn’t been recognised, but that had hardly mattered. They still fell into bed with the same desperation and parted ways with the guilt weighing on them even more heavily. 

Every six months, Hux receives a similar message through his personal grey channels of information. He’s not missed a meeting yet. Given the events on Krayt, though, Hux wonders if Dameron hasn’t taken some reckless chance in choosing Coruscant. Perhaps it is a jab at him, a sly swipe in response to the destruction wrought. He wonders when their time together will be up.

Even now, as Poe pushes him up against the door of the small, dingy room hidden somewhere in the very bowels of Coruscant, Hux is worried that they may still be caught out. As Dameron slowly strips him of his clothes, and then his self-control, Hux hates how much he has thought of this encounter, how he mapped out whole galaxies of touch across Poe’s body before he even received the final coordinates for their assignation. He revels in the slow slide of their tongues together, the rough guttural curses Poe spits in his ear as he moves on top of Hux, the way Poe clutches at his hair as he grinds his hips against Hux’s. 

He wonders what Snoke would say, if he were still whole. Would it be disgust, or some snide remark about how Snoke had known everything already, and wasn’t surprised at the deprivation to which Brendol Hux’s bastard son had sunk?

And, what exactly, is he taking all these risks for? Hux cannot fathom. Each time they meet seems more vivid, more intense than the last. He thinks about those nights for months on end in the quiet moments before he sleeps and wakes up aching for more. It would have been better if he’d been more like his predecessors and contented himself with less dangerous ways of establishing intimate relations. No doubt other generals of the fleet have contingencies planned for such needs. Hux has tried the traditional method of selecting the most attractive gunnery officer down in Weapons and ordering them to his room, but it never feels the same. For a start, they’re much too _compliant_. All of them too fearful of being demoted and posted to some obscure desert planet outpost to growl vulgarities at him while trying to knock him off his feet. None of them with enough courage to dictate terms to Hux while being pinned in place up against a convenient wall.

None of them, clearly, being quite as maddening as Poe Dameron, damn him.

“Is your non-existent morality distracting you again?” Poe asks later, when they’re both sweaty and sated and lying carefully apart on a narrow bed. “You wishing you didn’t have the hots for Rebel scum like me?”

They don’t meet each other’s eyes. That’s another unspoken rule. Poe has his hands behind his head, and he’s contemplating the damp ceiling as if it’s as fascinating as the inner mechanics of an X-Wing’s laser array.

“Are _you_?” Hux flings back, finding Poe’s shot landing a little too close to the mark for comfort.

“Would be a lot kriffin’ easier if I didn’t. At least I wouldn’t have to deal with seeing my dead comrades’ faces every time I close my eyes,” Poe says flatly, turning on his side so his back faces Hux.

—

“Do you ever wish we…” The question sounds inane and stupid to his ears the next morning, so Hux swallows the rest of it down. Poe is still pulling on his flying boots, blowing away the strands of his hair falling into his face. Hux almost thinks the other man hasn’t heard but a quiet snort tells him otherwise.

“How would that work out?” Poe asks, standing up. He’s dressed in last night’s rumpled clothing and he straps his blaster holster around his thigh. “You and me, against the galaxy? Nobody would buy that. You’d get better odds on Kylo Ren reforming the Jedi order after he finds Leia and tells her he’s sorry for killing his father.” He laughs hollowly. “You know, I’m not even sure why I keep letting you find me like this. It’s sick, is what it is. I — You and I, we’re not supposed to have anything else to say to each other apart from telling each other where to stick the business end of a blaster.”

“And yet,” Hux spreads his arms wide, taking the room in with a sweep of his hands. “Here we are.”

Poe bites his lip. “Yeah, yeah. This is messed up, Hux.”

They can agree on that, at least. Yet, even as Hux is straightening the cuffs of his shirt and Poe is bundling up some old New Republic credits, there seems to be an understanding between them, as there always is.

“I’ll be seeing you.” Poe says flatly, after they’ve fidgeted awkwardly for a minute.

“Yes,” Hux replies, before he can stop himself. “Get away, then. No doubt you’ll be wanting a head start so you can catch up with the rest of your Rebel flotilla.”

“Don’t need one, sweetheart. You’ll catch up when I let you. Just don’t die on me before then.” Poe is already out of the room and down the hall before Hux can think of a suitably cutting reply. 

As he has done so many times previously, Hux promises himself the next time they meet, Dameron will _not_ be allowed the last word.


End file.
